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Hi all,

I have been developing a card game over the last couple of years and it's going through (what I hope is) the last rounds of play testing.
It's come to my attention that my wording of the rulebook leaves a bit to be desired... in fact my old English teacher would probably be turning in his grave

Anyway, if any of you would be willing to spare a bit of time to read through and offer constructive suggestions or improvements I would be most appreciative. I can't offer any financial reward since it's a self-funded, amateur do-it-yourself type of game that may never get published. All I can offer is the sense of satisfaction and general well-being that you would feel after helping me out!

The rules can be downloaded from the website here:-
PHOTON play testers forum

If you just have a general interest and don't want to help proof read, that's fine too... there's a facebook page here where you can keep up to date with the latest news etc:-
PHOTON facebook page

---------------------------
A brief outline of the game

PHOTON is a card game for 1-4 players, running at approx 30-60 mins once you are familiar with the rules and cards.
Each player is a mercenary on the hunt for pirate clans, responding to a call for help from local planetary governments to clean out this scourge.
Your ship is represented by laying out 5 system cards in front of you, each acting as a different vital ship component. You draw a number of Energy cards into your hand, each worth 1 point of energy which can be used to run your ship, or you can instead use the ability described on the card to provide you with a temporary bonus.
You have to scan for targets by drawing Pirate Cards , attack them then as the game progresses eventually find their flagship and destroy it. Each pirate card has various stats and is worth a number of points. When you destroy a pirate those points go towards your final score, but you can also place the pirate card on top of one of your system cards which instantly upgrades that system and so improves the performance of your ship.

The challenge is to successfully manage your energy needs and eventually upgrade your ship in the best way possible, enabling you to take on bigger targets, draw more energy or scan larger areas of space, etc
One last wrinkle is that because you are all mercenaries there is also a healthy bit of backstabbing and trying to make it as tough as possible for your opponents.

That's a very brief description but I think it covers it.

Thanks for listening

Chris
thepaintedgoblin

Best of luck with it all.


Going to move this to the news/rumours board, get you some more traffic.

Let us know how things go please !

A general description of your game in the OP would be helpful. What are the themes, basic mechanics, style? It would help people know if it was the sort of thing that might interest them.

 reds8n wrote:
Best of luck with it all.


Going to move this to the news/rumours board, get you some more traffic.

Let us know how things go please !

Thanks reds8n, much appreciated.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Biophysical wrote:
A general description of your game in the OP would be helpful. What are the themes, basic mechanics, style? It would help people know if it was the sort of thing that might interest them.

You make a valid point... I'll sort that out now :-)

I'll give it a once-over, and tell you if there's anything that stands out. Is there a link to the playtest cards, or did I just miss it?

...

The first thing I'd suggest is to rename the pirate Scanners stat to Jammers. It's still nice and easy to remember (your Scanners stat vs. their Jammers stat), without introducing confusion by having one offensive Scanners stat and one defensive Scanners stat.

I'd suggest making a few things clearer about what counts as "Adjacent" for an attack run. For the following formation:
...1 ..2 3 .4 5 6 7 8
As I understand it, the first ship you attack must be 7 or 8.
Can I attack ship 7 and then follow up to ship 8?
Can I attack ship 7 and then follow up to ship 4, despite it being under ship 8?

 AlexHolker wrote:
I'll give it a once-over, and tell you if there's anything that stands out. Is there a link to the playtest cards, or did I just miss it?

Yeah sorry, all the play testing sets were claimed very early on. Sadly there were quite a few groups who never contributed, and only a handful have provided useful feedback. I guess that's one of the risks of sending out free stuff.
Because it's been a labour of love for me, it's all very low budget and I've relied on friends, family and those few play testers who HAVE given feedback. It's only recently that someone has mentioned the dire state of my grammar in the instruction book

Anyway, to answer your points...
Yes you have it correct, you would have to attack 7 or 8 first when you launch an attack run. Once you have resolved that attack you can move to any adjacent pirate in any direction. So you could go to 4 or 8 next. If you went to 4 you could then move to 2 5 or 8.
You're not the first to mention this grey area in the rules so it needs sorting.

It's an interesting suggestion regarding Jammers - I'll put it on the list.

And thanks :-)

Already had some fantastic feedback.
I really can't thank people enough for their generous giving nature, makes me glad to be a gamer :-)

Hi everyone,

Just a quick update (for those interested)
The rules have been tidied up and edited, thanks to input from a couple of volunteers. I haven't gone for changing the Pirate SCN stat to Jammers yet because the card files have already been issued, but this may be introduced before we do the final print run.

Also, I have now opened up the play testing forum so that anyone can join. It was previously for play testers only but now we're at this stage I want to open it up to the general public.
So, feel free to mosey over and sign up. Your comments, suggestions, observations etc etc would be very welcome!

We are currently a small friendly bunch, but we're hoping it will grow and become a friendly little community of bloodthirsty mercenary pirate hunters

The forum can be found here, (the updated rules can be downloaded from here too):-
http://photon.myfastforum.org/index.php

I have just typed out a pretty lengthy and very detailed game report on the PHOTON forum site. This gives a turn-by-turn account of a solo game I played earlier this evening. The idea is to convey the flow of the game to those who have never played it, or to offer some strategies to those who have!

You can read it here:-
http://photon.myfastforum.org/about83.html

Enjoy!